CONTENTS:

1. FINDING BOOKS
2. REFERENCE SOURCES -- DEFINITIONS AND REVIEWS
3. FINDING ARTICLES
4. KEY JOURNALS
5. EDUCATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARIES for PHYSICS
6. MANAGING YOUR REFERENCES and CITING SOURCES
7. GETTING ITEMS NOT AVAILABLE at DARTMOUTH
8. LOCATIONS / MAPS / HOURS / HELP
   

Use this guide as a starting point for your search for scholarly journal articles, books and reports on teaching techniques and learning styles. The Educational Digital Libraries for Physics section of this guide is a good place to start a search for ways to teach particular concepts. Many of the resources in these libraries have been evaluated for effectiveness in the classroom.
Use these links to locate more sources of information:

• The Dartmouth Library Home page has links to the catalog, course reserves, library staff members, document delivery services and library educational services.
• eResources includes: Research Guides, Article Indexes, Databases, Electronic Journals, e-Books, etc.
• The eResources folders for Physics and Education contain lists of additional article indexes, databases and ejournals that may be useful for your research.

FINDING BOOKS
Search the Dartmouth library catalog to locate books, journals, and other items in the collections of all the Dartmouth libraries. Educational materials tend to be in Baker/Berry Library shelved under the call letter "L", Physics materials are usually in Kresge Library shelved under QC,a and Astronomy materials are in Kresge shelved under QB. Search by subject (using Library of Congress subject headings) or by keyword; you can also search for specific works by author, or by title.

Below are a sampling of Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings that you may find useful:

Physics Study and Teaching
Active Learning
Experiential Learning
Physics Methodology
Educational psychology
Science Study and Teaching
Learning, Psychology of

Tip: if you're not sure of the exact Library of Congress Subject Heading, use a Keyword search to locate a few items that are relevant to your topic. Then use the Subject Headings associated with those items to lead you to more relevant materials.

Keyword searches can be made to search for your terms in specific fields (subject, title, author) by prefacing the keyword with a field code: s: or t: or a: (for subject, title, author).. With a little ingenuity, you can use this technique with great success, as shown here
(example:select keyword search option s:educational psychology and science)

---

KEY JOURNALS IN GENERAL SCIENCE, POPULAR PHYSICS, AND PHYSICS EDUCATION- selected listing

PHYSICS EDUCATION JOURNALS

American Journal of Physics Kresge from 1933; online from 1999. This is a key journal for information about teaching specific topics in Physics and is the professional journal of the American Association of Physics Teachers. Look for the occasional Resource Letter, which is an annotated literature review on broad topics. The literature covered includes research articles on teaching and learning in the field under disucssion.
International Journal of Science Education
The Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research
Physics Education - Kresge
Physical Review Special Topics Physics education research This is a very new journal, and the articles are focused on research on education rather than ideas for demonstrations. Kresge.
Physics Teacher - Kresge.

GENERAL AND POPULAR PHYSICS AND SCIENCE JOURNALS

American Scientist Kresge (current year only), Dana
Astronomy - Kresge
Discover - Baker/Berry Q/1/D57
Endeavour - Kresge
Nature Online
New Scientist - Baker/Berry Stacks Q/1/N21; Dana; Kresge, current year only
Physics Today - Kresge
Popular Science - Baker/Berry AP/2/P8
Science
Science News - Dana, Kresge, Baker/Berry Q1 .S
Scientific American - Kresge, Dana and Baker/Berry T1 .S5

---

Science and Physics Educational Digital Libraries are useful for locating a resource like a course outline, an applet to demonstrate an idea, or an assessment of a learning exercise.

comPADRE: Resources for Physics and Astronomy Education
This is one of the best in this category because it presents materials to use in the classroom along with good discussions of how the materials work for students and teachers. There are sections devoted to different topics and audiences, such as the The Quantum Exchange for materials at the college level on quantum physics, and Physics to Go which is geared towards the self-directed learner.

Other science and physics educational digital libraries:
PhET:Physics Education Technology
Physical Sciences Resources Center
Physics Animations
iLumina: Educational Resources for Science and Mathematics
MathForum (useful for how to teach all kinds of mathematic concepts at all levels)
National Numeracy Network (website is hosted at Dartmouth and aims to help educators meet needs in the area of quantiative skill development at all levels)

MANAGING YOUR REFERENCES and CITING SOURCES

Reference management programs allow you to build a personal database of your references to articles, books, websites - any information source - and then easily create bibliographies and reference lists using any particular style, without having to retype or reformat. See this overview of reference management programs widely used at Dartmouth.

Getting Items Not Available at Dartmouth

BORROW DIRECT: Delivers books from the combined library catalogs of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale within 4 business days.

Use DartDoc for documents that are in Storage or that are not in the Dartmouth Library system (Interlibrary Loan requests). See the Document Delivery webpage for more details on these services.

You can also use the Request Selected Item feature of the Library Catalog to request books or articles from Storage.

Locations | Maps | Hours | Help

Dartmouth College Library Kresge Physical Sciences Library Biomedical Libraries (Dana) Baker-Berry Library ------------------- Getting Started with Library Research Library Catalog eResources

Map of the libraries & Library Hours

Getting Started with Library Research
A quick review of the basics

Ask A Kresge-Cook Librarian

Accessing Electronic Resources from Off-Campus

Help

For assistance with any part of your research project please contact:
Noah Lowenstein, Physical Sciences Librarian, Kresge Physical Sciences Library, 6-9958
Jane Quigley, Head, Kresge and Cook Libraries, 6-3564
Ann Perbohner, Physical Sciences Librarian, Kresge Physical Sciences Library, 6-3845

Email: Kresge.Library.Reference@Dartmouth.EDU

Back to top

---

Guide created Oct. 2005